A Second Look...

By definition our economy is NOT in a depression cycle. So let me ask you this, why is our national government sending out a “stimulus rebate”? Early this year President Bush asked Congress to pass a 145 billion dollar package with would enable the government to send out tax incentive checks to taxpayers. These incentive checks can be used any way the taxpayers see fit. The idea being that it will stimulate our declining economy and save us from the dreaded “D” word. This is an unprecedented idea to help stimulate the economy. Particularly since once again, we are not in a depression. In my opinion our government needs to maybe take a second look at its ideas on how to help, as Bush puts it “give the economy a shot in the arm.”We need to take a look at how to create more US based jobs and ways to help out small business. Granted, Bush said he would give aide to small business in the form of tax relief, but we need to focus on growing our economy from within. Some would argue that is exactly what the tax invectives will do, but many will also tell you that they are going to put their money right in a savings account, and this will not help our economy. We do need to find a way to provide temporary relief for families in need, and perhaps this stimulus check will do just that, but it could backfire completely. Let me ask you this: who do you think will be paying for these checks down the road? Our kids, or their kids, or theirs?

In 1933, President Roosevelt passed a series of efforts to help stimulate and eliminated the economic despair faced by millions of Americans, this was called the New Deal. Many people opposed these initiatives because they believed that it gave the federal government too much power, and it was growing far too large. The New Deal created the Social Security Administration and Welfare. Did Roosevelt know how social security would be doing in 2008, of course not, but I would bet you that it is much worse that he would have expected. My point is, is that our government should take a second look at how it plans to stem our economic crisis. Otherwise future generations will have some new government subsidized time bomb to deal with.

He Said, She Said...

Okay, so in my last post I stated that I noticed a trend appearing: the candidates seemed to be taking shots much more frequently at each other. It would most certainly appear that this is in fact the case, and the candidates are just getting more critical of each other. I saw this article on Fox News.com and it really just seemed highlight this point. The title says it all: Obama Tries to Shake Off Questions About His Foreign policy. As I read the article I noticed several things that just seemed a little strange and led me to believe that perhaps the article could have been a bit more throughout in their reporting.

One thing that was prevalent throughout the entire article was an endless amount of quotes from Obama. Most of the quotes included in the article seemed to be framed in a sense that makes them seem like they were cropped and cut to be used specifically for this article’s context. I understand that this can have a greater impact to the readers, but in this case a story that should have COMPLETE the coverage, it seemed to have a negative impact on Obama, and Clinton as well. Another thing that hurt the ethos of the article and the author were some of the comments that were made after the quotes. One that stands out in particular is; “whether he was a closet Muslim.” This comment just seemed to be unnecessary and the article could have gone without it.
“Democrat Barack Obama” these are the first words of the article, right off the bat, for some reason, this just seemed funny to me. It just seemed as if they wanted to push the point that Obama is a democrat. In my personal opinion I think they could have had a bit more tact with their introduction, and that is my personal opinion.
It really seems that it will ultimately come down to a giant session of He said, She said. For the first part of this article much of it is quotes that just go back and forth from what Clinton said then to what Obama said in his defense, and vice versa. It is unfortunate when the Associated Press manipulates statements and quotes to further various agenda’s. This just goes to show that you shouldn’t always necessarily believe what you read.

Neck and Neck

So, at the end of the Wisconsin primary it would appear that Mr. Obama has extended his lead even further. Mr. Patrick Healy and Jeff Zeleny, of the New York Times wrote a very thorough and insightful article, Wisconsin Hands Obama a Victory, the Ninth in a Row, which provided complete coverage over tonight’s primary races. It would appear that “candidate bashing” is the new trend. Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain were quoted tonight taking shots at Mr. Obama. Although much of the first page of this article includes many of those derogatory comments made by the various candidates, it gave a very nice perspective of where everyone stands in the race right now. In the Democratic corner, Obama and Clinton are neck and neck, and it would appear that McCain has a firm grasp on the Republican side. When you get to the heart of the article the authors break down the remaining primary races and explain exactly who has to win what in order to be the victor. The authors also go into great depth on whose support they are campaigning for and what platforms they are using. For instance, Mrs. Clinton is “burning the midnight oil” as she puts it to capture more blue-collar and union votes. While Mr. Obama is working hard to get the youth’s attention. One thing that was extremely interesting in the article was exactly how much they broke down the individual results and exactly who voted for who. Both the authors,
Mr. Healy and Mr. Zeleny have been political commentators for many years with the New York Times. Mr. Healy in particular has been following the presidential race like a hawk posting daily on his blog at nytimes.com. Overall, if the authors intended to give a thorough outline of where the race stood they did a great job. They were very clear and concise as far as exactly where everyone stood. In particular they did a very nice job giving both the Democrats and the Republicans their fair share of the coverage. This helped inform the reader and give them an overall clearer picture of things. The only thing that was a bit much was the extensive coverage of the various smear campaigns of the candidates. In my personal opinion I could care less what one candidate has to say about the other, let us, the voter decide what should be taken into account when filling out our ballot. I don’t believe that the authors’ inclusion of the derogatory comments took away from the overall impact of the article, in fact it added to it by creating the whole picture.However, from the perspective that I get it looks like the race is going to get a bit dirtier.

2009 Federal Budget

Bush's Budget Projects Deficits

Yesterday,The Bush Administration released their 2009 federal budget. Many of the items proposed in the budget will make it very difficult for the next presidential administration to balance it in upcoming years. To no surprise, military and defense spending is up, the Defense Department in particular will grow by nearly seven percent. Once again it appears that The Administration is continuing to push their agenda of homeland security and the ongoing war on terror, as it may be their last chance. The 2009 federal budget also contains provisions that would keep tax cuts, that are scheduled to expire in 2011, on the books as permanent. In total the 2009 federal budget would create a deficit over $410 billion. In 2004, at the end of President Bush’s first term in office the deficit was pushing $413 billion. When he had stepped into office three years earlier there was in fact a budget surplus. Many of the nations financial problems can be attributed to the steady increase of defenses. The economy has also slowed down considerably in the past years. Bush proposed several items in the budget to help stop the growing deficit, one of them by collecting healthcare fee’s from non-disabled veterans. They have also proposed that any domestic program not related to defense keep their funding at $393 billion over the next five years. The next administration will have their hands full trying to get the budget out of the red.

DIRECT LINK TO ARTICLE: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/04/AR2008020400493.html